Journey
by TheWomanWhoCodesAndWrites
Summary: Post-Champion. When an unexpected thing happens and June falls into a coma, Day decides to do a task long overdue. He sets off to trace the path of the memory he lost 27 years earlier, with the help of June's freshly finished memoir. This is a story of his journey, his loved ones, and the love he shares with June throughout their many years together and apart.
1. Prologue

**AN: **Just a little idea that I had while flipping through the pages of Legend, Prodigy, and Champion again recently. With Day's memory about those two years of his life gone, his chapters are nothing but an echo of a life long forgotten, buried deep in the haze clouding parts of his memory. I wonder whether he would be able to fill them back in, if he is shown June's chapters. Towards the end of my imagining, I also started picturing what he would have done, had it been June in a coma and not him. And thus this story was born, a combination of their blessed far future, their bittersweet past, and their uncertain near future.

The story takes place twenty seven years (yes, twenty seven :)) after the end of Champion. The initial chapters will (yes, I do plan!) contain mostly events happening at that time, but I imagine there will be more flashback of the far past and the near past as the story goes further. It'll focus on the Wing-Iparis clan, but mostly on Daniel/Day and his relationships with his loved one, past and present.

I don't have much more than this written for the time being, and I'm writing really, really slowly (glancing nervously at my readers who are waiting for my THG fics, 'A Tale of Two Districts' and 'The Guardian') that I'm not sure when I'll put the next thing up. I hope you enjoy what I have, though. And as usual, I'm open for criticism, good, bad, and ugly.

**Disclaimer: **Legend Trilogy and its characters belong to Marie Lu. I'm just borrowing.

* * *

**Prologue  
****Daniel**

If only June knows what I'm doing right now, she would probably punch me on the face for being pathetic. But truth is, she doesn't know what I'm doing. For heaven's sake, she's not even here. 'Here' as in on earth, not in a goddy corridor in Los Angeles Central Hospital.

Alright. I think I've blown it up quite a bit. June is not dead. She's where I'd been twenty seven years and a bit ago, in that place between life and death they call coma. I would've called it her sweet revenge, if it wasn't for our girls. She wouldn't have done this to them if she'd had a choice. Especially not to Little Clip.

Speaking of Little Clip, I don't even know where she is now. She looked pretty good when they brought her out, thus probably she's with those other babies in that freaky nursery room. Although, considering her pedigree, she might as well have her own corner with gold curtains or something. Which would be ridiculous, because she's not even a day old.

"May I get you anything, Mr. Wing?" A nurse crouches next to me, her head bowed slightly in respect. "Mrs. Wing might take a long while."

"That's Ms. Iparis," I correct her, trying hard not to yell or do something stupid like that. "She's never changed her name."

"Alright." The nurse flashes me that polite smile I wouldn't have gotten out of anyone thirty years ago. "May I help in any way, though?"

"Just give me some news on the baby, please." I give up, stretching my stiff legs on the floor. "And on my other daughters, if they're still around. Then go wake my wife up, if you could. She needs to see the baby."

(Or, more frankly, _just kick me out of here because I'm completely cracked._)

"Alright." The polite nurse flashes her smile again. "I'll come find your children for you."

Right. I forgot that I'm part of the Republic Elites now. She'll obviously think a hundred times before kicking me out.

"Thank you," I say, as she gets up and walks away.

She turns around, and gives me another smile. It's either the world is cracked, or I am cracked.

I don't know how these all happened.

* * *

It had started as a normal June 30th for us. A pretty normal day, at least for our household's standard.

I was at work the whole day, supervising first-year evaluation for the pups (or Junior Agent, if you're like June and you want it all to be politically correct). Our teenagers were at Drake, and our ten year old was at school. June, as far as I know, had also gone to work in the morning. At some point, she'd returned early from her Batalla office and left me a message to pick the girls up, because she was 'exhausted'. In hindsight, I should have heard it as 'woozy and about to faint' instead, because that seems to be what it actually was.

At about four, Drake's Dean Secretary called me to collect Dawn and Rose. Apparently, they were involved in something called 'an incident'. So, I came over there and picked them up, just like other responsible Dads would. As usual, the problem turned out quite simple. Rose, who is twelve and _my _child, had decided to act on her big sister's ex-boyfriend's betrayal by giving him a lesson.

"Did you really have to glue his pants on his chair?" Dawn, who is almost fifteen and calm and almost everything her mother is, asked her sister once we were alone in our car.

"Yeah," Rose answered, casually picking some mysterious dirt from under her nail. "He had it coming."

Dawn sighed and pressed her head on the window. I could tell she was actually happy about it, though, because she wouldn't have let it go otherwise.

I drove them home to Ruby afterwards, stopping by the high school to pick Maya up. She was somewhat quiet. Probably she has sensed something was wrong.

"What's happening to Mom?" she asked us from the back seat.

"She might just be really tired," Dawn reassured her little sister. "She's 36 weeks and 4 days along. Little Clip's probably five pounds something now."

When we got home, I saw that June was indeed really tired. I found her half passed-out on our bed, clutching her personal tablet.

"Hi." She greeted me with a kiss. "Welcome home."

Her eyes were glassy. I assumed it was just those weird pregnancy emotions she'd been having with the surprise baby.

"Little Clip's dancing." She chuckled, and pulled my hand towards her stomach. "Feel."

It wasn't a goddy dance, to tell the truth. It was more like frantic kicks.

"June." I looked at her. "Are you sure she's fine in there?"

"She is." June got up and smiled. "She's just..."

That was when I realized June was convulsing, and that the sheets and her legs were covered in blood.

* * *

From that first seizure, everything was a blur. I remember catching June and yelling at Dawn to call emergency, but not much of the other things at home. In my next lucid memory, I was trying to keep June awake in the ambulance, telling her things and stories and just begging her not to fall asleep.

They wheeled her into the operation theatre as soon as we arrived. I wasn't even allowed in. For some long, long minutes, I just waited outside with the girls, and Eden and Tess who drove them here. The first person coming out of the theatre was the nurse who wheeled Little Clip off in a cot. The next person was a doctor. He told me that June's blood pressure had gone goddy high, and that something had broken in her brain, and that she'd slipped into coma before Little Clip was out.

Thus I'm here now, on this cold, hard floor in a white-bright corridor, clinging onto a hope that June would wake up. I would really, really like to say I didn't care when, but that would be a lie. I want her to wake up _now. _I want her to walk out of that goddy door across the corridor, look at me, and say, "are you ready to go home?"

A shadow descends on me. My reflexes send me into this defensive crouch, before my brain fully registers that it's Dawn.

"Dad." She looks calm, undeterred, and so much like her mother it's just painful. "A nurse said you're looking for me."

"And your sisters," I add, feeling a little guilty I've left her to care for them.

"Maya's asleep." Dawn sits next to me, squashing her ponytail against the wall. "Rose is a ball of nerves, so I told her to go get some food and calm down. Little Clip is not settling. They let me hold her for a bit, but I think it's Mom she's after."

Dawn closes her eyes, and my guilt just explodes. She is still in her Drake uniform. I don't think she's rested a second, since this whole drama started. When she was born those fifteen years ago, I promised the Heavens that I would never let her childhood end too soon. I guess I've already broken it now, because what I have next to me is a young adult.

"She kind of looks like me."

"Huh?"

"Little Clip." Dawn opens her eyes and cocks her head, looking _awed _I totally missed on it. "Finally, a sister who looks like me."

There's a smile on Dawn's face, but I would be stupid not to see what's behind. It's a _bittersweet _smile.

"You should ask Eden to take you all home," I say, because there's no other logical thing to say. "Maybe leave Little Clip here, but you and Rose and Maya should go home."

"What about you, though?" Dawn looks me straight in my eyes. "What about Mom?"

"I'll look after June." I put my hands on Dawn's shoulders. "You should take Rose and Maya home."

"Who'll look after you?" Dawn's eyes, one of the few things she hasn't exactly gotten from June, look really sad.

"I'll be fine, Little Sweetheart." Her childhood nickname leaves my tongue just like that. "I'm a Legend. I survived a goddy experiment, the streets, an execution, a brain tumour, a war, and a memory loss."

She snorts and shakes her head.

"You're right, Dad." She stands on her knees. "I'll leave you to it, then. Just call if you need me. I'll be on leave from Drake."

"You should just go to class," I say what a good Dad would. "You love school, and you've only got a couple of weeks left."

"It's fine, Dad." She smiles and kisses my cheek. "My family needs me now."

I watch her in silence, as she gets up and walks away. For a moment, I see John in her place, leaving home at the crack of dawn for a fourteen hour shift to feed Eden and I. June and I have never, ever wanted Dawn to give up so much. Yet that's just what she always does, putting her little sisters first.

"Oh, Dad." She stops, turns around, and walks back over. "I think you'll want to have this."

Her hand reaches inside her jacket, pulling out a rectangular thing. I know what it is. I saw it in June's hands, before the chaos started.

"I disabled the passcode and fingerprinting," Dawn says. There is mischief in her voice, and in her dark eyes, betraying her straight expression. _Cheeky. _"You should see what Mom's been up to, Dad. You'll be amazed."

"She'll kill us," I warn her.

"It'll be on me, then." She winks and turns back around. "Just give me a heads up when you've told her."

And then she's gone, leaving me alone in this corridor with June's tablet in my hands.

"Alright," I say to myself, pressing that button on the top. "Let's just see what this is."

The screen comes alive, revealing what looks like a book cover. I snort, as I recognize two of the three symbols there. The Republic and The Colonies. I shouldn't be surprised that June is reading a war book.

"Okay, June," I mumble, tapping the screen where I should to open the book. "Let's see what you're reading."

The cover flips, revealing a white page with neat block letters in its middle. And that's when I realized that she hasn't been _reading _this book.

She has been _writing _it.

* * *

_This memoir is written by June Iparis for Daniel Altan Wing, Dawn Grace Iparis, Rose Kaede Wing, Maya Suren Wing, and Little Clip (tentative name, to be revised once official name is known)._

_My lights, I hope you enjoy my coming of age story._

_Memoir finished in Los Angeles, Republic of America, on June 30.  
__28 years and 212 days after the first event.  
__27 years and 101 days after the last._

* * *

**Questions? Complaints? Feel free to tell me (PM and Review are both fine).**


	2. Chapter One

**AN: **Hi all. Thanks for the reviews, follows, and favourites. Answering my guest reviewer - June and Day are 44 in the 'present' part of this story. Little Clip is an unplanned baby, and how they failed to notice June's health problem will be explained more throughout the story.

Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention - this story is strictly canon-compliant, and not part of the 'Years of Dawn' universe. There's a Dawn in this story, and she's pretty much the same Dawn we saw in 'Years of Dawn'. She wasn't born until her parents were 29, though, and she's always had her father around growing up.

Without further ado - I hope you enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **All belongs to Marie Lu. I'm just borrowing here :).

* * *

**Chapter One  
****Daniel  
**"I am smart. I have what the Republic considers good genes." - June  
(Marie Lu, _Legend_, p.13)

My wife is smart, there's no denying in that. And her 'good genes' argument is probably valid too, judging how smart and good-looking our girls are.

I didn't know - or at least didn't remember - how cocky her teenaged self was about it, though.

I guess the knowledge is mine too, now. It's there in first chapter of her memoir, in the whole story about climbing a skyscraper with a goddy gun strapped on her back and getting 'collected' by her brother. I'm past that part now, right in the middle of the second chapter, where she spoke about seeing her brother's body after he was killed.

And I just can't go on. I don't think I can even be here, right now.

I close my eyes, as I put the tablet to sleep and stash it inside my work jacket's pocket.

"Daniel."

_Tess. _What is she doing here?

"Hey." I open my eyes back, reluctant. "What's up?"

Instantly, I see what's up. Tess has a bundle in her arms, a squirming thing wrapped in a white blanket.

"You can't just leave her behind." Tess sounds firm. "She doesn't even know what's happening."

"I've never said it's her fault," I argue, looking up. "I just can't deal with her right now, alright? It's hard."

"I'm not saying it's easy." Tess sets herself carefully down, balancing the bundle in one arm. "I just want you to look at her."

"Here." I hold out an arm. "Pass her."

"Not when you can't love her." Tess shakes her head, and leans back. "Just look."

"I don't hate her."

"But you can't love her."

I look away, because Tess is right. I can't love this kid, no. Not when June's stuck indefinitely between life and death like this because of some blood poisoning the kid caused.

Fine. I do actually think it's the kid's fault.

"I'll get there," I tell the friend who's become my sister-in-law. "It's just... Tess, I love her mother."

"And she does, too. She's probably wondering where she is, what happened to her, where are those voices she usually hears... _Day, _please. Look at her."

The kid picks that very moment to make those funny noises babies make. Defeated, I turn to her and force myself to see her, for what she is. A baby. A baby with a wisp of dark hair, dark unfocused eyes, and a little face which reminds me of June.

_Goddy hell. _Was it just a few hours ago that I asked June whether this baby was alright?

I think I'm definitely cracked.

* * *

Tess heads back off to the nursery with the baby right after that. I get off the floor, too, and head up to the third floor laboratories.

They haven't been that goddy slaughterhouse they used to be for twenty seven years now. None of those plague nonsense, no experimentations on poor ten year olds who failed Trials or any other kind of Republic rejects. Third floor is for medical research nowadays. It's for young doctors hopeful to cure deadly diseases and make everyone's life better.

This time around, I walk in there through the official entrance, in broad neon light. I let the doctors, technicians, and guards see me as I make my way to that closed door on the wall. None of them do a thing such as batting an eyelid. One of them, a pale young man in white lab coat, bows his head in respect as I catch his eyes. He might as well be thinking I'm here for work, that there's some stinking matter I have to investigate myself.

A dark-skinned guard of perhaps thirty comes up to me and bows her head. There are both fear and curiosity in her eyes as she looks up at me. "Is there anything we can help with, Director Wing?"

"I just need to use the emergency exit, if you don't mind," I explain, glancing at said door.

Her eyes widen, and she lowers her voice. "Is there anyone we need to keep watch on, Director?"

"No." I attempt a smile. "I'm not here on behalf of the Agency."

"Oh." She bows her head again. "I'll leave you to it, then. My apologies."

"Don't be sorry."

I don't think I convince her, but that would have to do now. I need to keep going, before things get even more out of hand than they are now.

There is no more fridge near that emergency door now, but somehow I can still see it. I can picture the empty bottles of plague cure in the racks, the door ridden with guards' bullets, and a terrified doctor with a knife on his throat. When I open the door and step into the spiralling staircases behind, I can still hear shouts and clicks from the other doors closing. I see a ghostly knife on that plaster wall, under that window which I remember jumping out of. Tonight, there's no jumping out for me. There's no hurry and no knife, no guards searching the building for a criminal they won't even recognise. My official ID tag, which is still tucked under my jacket, works fine on that ground floor door which opens to the back alley. I take a brief look at the tag, even when I know I'll just see a plain white card under these weak lights. Somehow I need a reminder of who I am now.

_I'm Daniel Altan Wing. I'm forty four years old. I'm one of the Republic Elites, the Director of their Intelligence Agency. I'm safe, and so are my wife, my four daughters, my little brother, my sister-in-law, and my nephews. I'm not on the run. My biggest and only problem now is that my wife is in coma, and that I don't know what to make of our newborn daughter._

No plague. No starving family. No injuries and desires to make a run for the Colonies. None of the burning fury.

But there are memories.

They are deep in haze, just like all that I was told I lost those twenty seven years ago. A searing pain on my arm, ribs, and ankle, shouts of order behind me. A Soldier following me down this alley, to a smaller one with a sewer cover on the gravel. I'd seen him just a little bit earlier that night. His name was Metias Iparis, and he had dark hair and some semblance to my wife.

He was her brother. And I threw a knife at him, in a bid to escape down into that sewer.

That was how it all started.

* * *

I don't waste much time with the ghosts and haze out there. As soon as my feet start cooperating again, I turn around and make my way back to the hospital's front door, straight up to the maternity floor where they're keeping June and Little Clip.

Seven hours into the whole drama, nothing has changed. They make me put a loose, sterile hospital gown, a facemask, and a surgery cap just to go into that goddy room and see June. She's still asleep, strangely peaceful under the goddy tubes they hooked her on. In some sense, I feel glad that she's not looking at me now. She won't like the goddy mess she'll see.

I need to fix this.

I leave June to her coma, and walk back out. At this time of the night, the maternity floor is empty. There are only faint cries in the distance, some of babies and some others of would-be-mothers. Suddenly, I'm inside my memories again, this time in a lucid one.

* * *

I was walking June up and down this corridor, at roughly the same hour of the night as now.

It was July 12th, the day after June's twenty ninth birthday. We'd been here, in this floor, for fourteen or so long hours. They said it was all normal for a first baby. It was hard for me not to freak out, though. Not when June was drenched with sweat, grimacing in pain, and crushing my hand for dear life.

"Forty eight seconds and a half," she panted out, once she was coherent again. "Three minutes, fifty six seconds away from the previous."

"For goddy goodness' sake." I ran my hand on my hair. "How did you count that?"

She looked at me funny. "I just counted."

And that was how she soldiered on, for the next couple of hours. She didn't cry. She didn't scream. She just gasped and counted, gasped and counted, and whimpered her brother's name towards the end.

"If it's a boy," I told her, right near the end as the doctors and nurses stormed the delivery room. "We'll name him Metias, after your brother."

"Grace, if it's a girl," June panted out and smiled at me. Even in her pain, she was still the most beautiful girl - woman - I'd ever seen. In her dark, golden-glinted eyes, I saw our love. Parts of it which I remembered, and the ones which I didn't. "After your mother."

I felt a stab of faint sadness. It didn't last long, though. It was gone the next second, replaced by anticipation, dread, fear, and my love for this woman with glistening forehead and dark hair stuck all over her wet face.

We became parents less than an hour later, to a girl born to the first light of day. She looked so much like her mother, and none like mine, that I couldn't rightfully call her Grace.

"... Dawn Grace," June breathed out, as she caught my eyes. She looked down at our baby, who looked back at her with these dark eyes, and smiled the gentlest of smile I'd ever seen. "Dawn Grace Wing."

"Iparis," I told her firmly. "Dawn Grace _Iparis_. Your father's legacy. Your brother's. Yours. The Republic and the world needs another Iparis."

* * *

June just counts_. _That's how she rolls, and how she's raised our girls to roll, although so far she's only been successful with Dawn.

Well, at least Dawn can show Little Clip the ropes if something happens to June.

I blink the terrible thoughts away, as I reach the nursery. Straight away, I'm escorted behind a double door, by a young nurse as polite as everyone else I've seen tonight.

"Doctor Tess Wing is with the baby," the nurse says, as she leads me down a corridor. It's bright white, with a big glass window on one side. The curtains are closed now, but I can hear noises and cries from the inside. This is the freaky nursery room where they keep those rows and rows of babies. "The baby is doing really well, Director Wing. She'll be ready to go home in two days."

I don't respond to that.

Little Clip is kept at the very end of the corridor, in a smaller room with no observation window. She's in Tess's arms as I walk in, happily suckling from a bottle.

"What are you feeding her?" I ask Tess, as I walk over to them.

Tess looks at me as if I've grown some ridiculous things on my face. "Formula."

"Poor girl."

"Indeed."

I stand there watching, until the whole feeding thing finishes. Then, the little thing starts making noises, again. This time, Tess hands her over to me. Seems like I passed the 'love her' test.

"We haven't got a name yet," I start telling Tess, as I prop Little Clip on my shoulder. "June wanted to wait until we see her in person."

"Maya told me that." Tess's eyes are fixed on mine. "You do have a nickname for her, don't you? Little Clip, or something like that."

"Yes." I lift the kid up a little bit, because she is fussing. "Little Clip, like in paperclip. Might end up putting it on the Republic record, if June..."

"Day, June is not going to die," Tess cuts me harshly. "We see a lot of pre-eclampsia and eclampsia every month here. Most of the mothers survive. And..."

"And?"

There's a wan smile on Tess's lips. "Commander Little Clip Wing just doesn't sound right."

"You don't know what she's going to be." I glance down at Little Clip, who's started falling asleep on me. "Maybe she'll be a doctor, like you. Or an engineer, like Eden. Or a Senator, or the Princeps, or the..."

I trail off. I don't know our Elector that well, personally, but June once told me that our Elector's mother basically died giving birth.

"She might end up in the streets, too." I decide to get off the Republic Elite board altogether. "Goddy hell, I don't know."

"Day, language. There's a baby here."

"She won't know what it means."

Tess chuckles. "Remember Rose's first word?"

"'Goddy'," I say, and suddenly I remember how furious June was back then, and how beautiful she was in her fury. And it all hurts again.

"Go home and get some sleep." Tess gently takes Little Clip from me. "I'll ask Eden to come get you."

I do just what she suggests, because I don't know what else would make sense right now.

* * *

**Thanks for reading. As usual, questions and complaints are welcomed - reviews and PMs are both accepted.**


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